


love attains the greatest intensity in murder

by leapylion3



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Generational Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Kink Meme, Mental Instability, Mild Gore, Minor Violence, Murder, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Redemption, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:38:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leapylion3/pseuds/leapylion3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>She did not even ask him, never asked him, but he did it anyway. He followed her around dutifully, slinging a bow and arrow over his slumped shoulders and holding a sword in his broken hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love attains the greatest intensity in murder

**Author's Note:**

> this took way longer than necessary and i hate myself for writing so slowly but WHAT CAN YA DO
> 
> based on the prompt: _They find each other, team up to take down the people who have hurt them, and while Cat may never forgive Theon for what he did, she appreciates everything Reek does for Lady Stoneheart._
> 
> who needs school when you have fanfiction, honestly 
> 
> enjoy! <3

_i._

A gust of cold wind hit him in the face as the door swung open. His captor whirled around, eyes wide and shock evident on his face. The knife in his hand was forgotten for a moment, and Reek could have cried. His captor would have remembered himself if he did, though, and Reek wouldn’t have been surprised if his tormentor would scoop out his eyeballs. “I don’t like it when you cry,” he would say, sneering. “It’s almost as ugly as when you smile.”

Reek did not think his captor would ever look _scared_. He looked like a young child in that moment, and Reek would have smiled if he remembered how. He would grin and laugh in his tormentor’s face, like how he used to in the days when he was defiant and _foolish_. Reek was scared too, though, and he was no longer the Prince of the Iron Islands. He knew better than to test his captor like that.

The woman stepped inside the dungeon, and Reek shivered. The dungeon was never the warmest of places, but he could feel the chill seep into his bones in that moment. She had brought the winter with her. She _was_ the winter, he realized, with her cold, unforgiving eyes and snow white skin. As she got closer, though, he saw that her eyes were dead and her skin was the colour of curdled milk.

She was not pure snow, not like the bastard a prince once knew, not like the blizzards a ward had become accustomed to at a ruined castle.

She was snow after a rainfall, mud covering her true form. Reek had never seen her before- _Theon might have, once_ \- but a part of him knew that under the rot and decomposition, she had been beautiful. He knew that feeling well.

His captor did not move or say a word as she untied the ropes binding Reek to the cross. With every tiny movement, Reek heard the _swish_ of her thick skirts, could feel it brush up against his leg. Her fingers were ice whenever she touched him, but he did not feel cold. She was _warm_ , but Reek could not tell you how. She simply _was_. She was winter and summer all at once; the promise of a bountiful crop and years of misery.

She plucked the knife out of his captor’s hand, and Reek could have sworn that she smiled. It was terrible and gruesome, like the look in his tormentor’s eyes when he was about to take another finger or tooth or toe. Reek was not scared anymore; he had learnt fear, and it followed him around like a constant shadow. He welcomed it like an old friend, for fear did not seem so frightful when you looked at it in the face. He could almost pretend that he was a knight in a girl’s songs, a red-haired girl with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, who would swoon and sigh at everything. But life is not a song, and there are no happy endings.

She could not speak, but she did not have to.

His savior tied his captor to the cross, and Reek left the knife in his captor’s belly to rust.

* * *

 

_ii._

She did not even ask him, never asked him, but he did it anyway. He followed her around dutifully, slinging a bow and arrow over his slumped shoulders and holding a sword in his broken hands. She gave him iron gloves, to cover his missing fingers. They were stiff hands, nothing more, and he found himself staring at them and clenching them like a fist more often than not. He could shoot a bow and arrow again, and while he did not have the same skill as he used to- _no, that wasn’t me, it never was_ -, he was useful to her.

The Leech Lord was next. He was more threatening than his bastard, somehow, despite barely ever uttering a word. His eyes were chips of ice, glinting with mild amusement whenever a drop of blood fell where he could see. But Reek’s lady _was_ ice, and nothing could melt her. They had already tried, but no one could stop the winter.

If The Leech Lord was outraged by his bastard son’s death, he did not show it. Reek thought he was incapable of showing any emotion, which only made him all the more intimidating. He was a man without remorse; Reek had learnt that soon enough. He had cut down the Young Wolf easily, despite following him into war and being one of his closest advisors. A man without honour... _that_ was something to be feared.

He was sitting at his desk, writing a letter with his spidery crawl. He looked up at them with an almost bored expression on his pale face. It was not as if two ghosts came into his room, two of the undead, two of the past. He watched them as if they were nothing more than mere specks of dust, sitting upon his favourite book. They would be gone with a wave of his hand, with a wipe of an old rag.

Reek’s lady had given him a sword of a young king, the hope of the North. She had known him well, might have been his mother a long time ago. She was a mother no longer, all her children gone and a heart made of stone.

The Leech Lord did not scream; he never screamed. He stared with his ice eyes, brow perpetually quirked up in a silent challenge. Reek’s fingers curled around the hilt of the blade, the sword of someone who a prince used to call a friend, a brother.

“The North remembers.”

Reek and his lady took a quick peek at the letter on the Leech Lord’s desk. It was addressed to all the great houses, telling them of Ramsay Bolton’s unfortunate death. (Reek would not call it unfortunate; _well-deserved_ was more suiting.) With shaking, broken fingers and a glance at his lady, Reek picked up the quill. In messy, barely legible scripture, he added Roose Bolton’s name to the raven.

_Well-deserved_ , indeed, Reek thought.

* * *

 

_iii._

The Lord of the Crossing was an old prickly man, with browning teeth and brittle white hair hanging limply around his face. Reek did not know if the creases by the lord’s mouth were from laughing or scowling. He seemed to do a lot of the both. Reek had an inkling that if you asked the lord, he would not know, either. (Reek had no intention of asking him, though; he did not want to talk to him for longer than necessary. And that wasn’t for very long, he hoped.)

Everyone knew of the Red Wedding, knew of the betrayal at the hands of the Freys and Boltons. It was why Reek and his lady were going around the Seven Kingdoms, killing anyone who stood in their way. It was vengeance, and it was bloody, but Reek did not mind. It was for his lady, and he would do whatever it took to earn her trust again. (A foolish prince had lost it, awhile ago, but Reek did not know that boy, not anymore.)

The Lord of the Crossing sat on his chair, gloved hands on the table. None of his family was in the hall, which was all the better for Reek and his lady. The old lord was still smiling, always smiling, and his eyes shone with malice. His laughter echoed off the walls, bouncing and resonating like thunder. Reek thought of a story he’d once been told, the story of a lion slaying a dragon. The dragon had laughed, had told him to burn it all.

Reek heard his lady speak for the first time. Her voice was scarcely a whisper, throaty and scratching, almost painful to hear. Reek kept listening; it would be a long time before she would speak again. She pressed down on her throat, covering the gash that had never truly healed, and Reek feared that it would reopen under the pressure and she would choke on her blood. But his lady was made of iron and steel, and could never be bent or broken. He would die before she fell. (And Reek would die for his lady in a heartbeat, would do anything she asked of him.)

Her thin fingers clutched Reek’s arm, sharp fingernails digging into his skin. He did not wince; he was used to much worse. This was a comfort, almost, knowing that she was by his side. She had become a constant fixture in his life, as a southern trout had once been to a kraken. He could almost pretend, for a moment- _no_. He’d been pretending all his life, and he did not want to start again.

“I have yet to give you a wedding gift, my lord,” his lady said, eyes glinting with amusement. Others only saw death and ice and hatred in them, but Reek saw past that. No one knew his lady like he did. She took joy in the revenge, and he could not blame her. Not when he, too, relished it.

He strung an arrow and squeezed an eye shut to aim. The goosefeather tickled his cheek, and he thought about a ward who had been the best archer in the North. He let go, and it sailed through the air with a satisfying _swoosh._

The laughter finally ended.

* * *

 

_iv._

The cell was dark and damp, and Reek thought of the dungeon he’d been put in for…how long had it been? Weeks, months, _years_? That was a distant blur to him, and he could hardly remember any of it. He was a changed man, and counting all the hours as a prisoner had done him no good. All that mattered was when he was with his lady; she had liberated him from his life of pain and misery.

The queen was nothing like how she’d been when he’d last seen her. (Reek had never seen her, but…he’d heard stories. A part of him knew how she’d looked, a part that was long dead and gone.) She was naked, shrunken in on herself, green eyes wide and chin trembling. Her hair was completely gone, ridding the lioness of her mane. Still, she managed to look _regal_ somehow, for that was in her nature.

She flinched as Reek’s lady took a step towards her, pale arms wrapping tighter around her knees. She did not look away from them, but slunk closer in the corner of the cell. It smelt of piss and shit, and Reek remembered how Lannisters shit gold. He did not think that was true, but then again, the queen did not look much like a Lannister in that moment. She was a scrawny, mewling cat from the streets, not a great, feared lioness.

Reek knelt in front of her, and her eyes were such a startling shade of emerald that he could have sworn he’d never seen colour before this. He moved his gaze to the dagger hanging at his hip and wrapped his fingers around it. It felt heavy in his palm, it felt _wrong_. This was not the way for a queen to die. He could not stain her porcelain skin with blood, could not leave her to face her death as her life dripped out of her.

She was pitiful, and this was a mercy. That was what he’d told his lady, when they had slipped into the dungeons. She had pulled him close, the ice in her stare turning to fire. “You were pitiful when I found you. I could have killed you, and called it a mercy.” She’d let him go, and they kept on walking. “This is not a mercy; this is justice.”

The queen stared at him, almost expectantly. She was a young girl in that moment, silently pleading innocence and begging. Reek slid the dagger back into its sheath, and she looked as if she would cry- in relief or something else, he did not know.

He curled his fingers around the white column of her neck, and her lips parted to speak. “ _Valonqar_ ,” she whispered, and he could feel her pulse flutter under his palm. “Little brother. Not mine, but…” Reek had no family, but there was a ward who’d once been a little brother, the youngest in a flock of krakens.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and the air left her body in a pained gasp. The queen’s rule had come to an end.

* * *

 

_v_.

The poor girl in charge of the mules just about fell off the mountaintop upon seeing them. She quickly recovered, mumbled her name, and helped them onto the mules. They kept their faces covered, but one could smell the death on them. Reek had grown accustomed to the putrid stench; he would not be Reek without it. He would be…he wasn’t sure what he would be. _Nothing_ , he supposed. (Although being Reek was quite close to being nothing at all.)

His lady had told him that they were going to see an old friend. Reek knew what she truly meant, though. All of the past _friends_ they had gone to see had betrayed them in some way or another. It wouldn’t be long before this _friend_ of his lady’s would be joining the others ten feet under the earth. And Reek would comply without question; _he_ did not know these people. They were not _his_ friends. (Friends, Reek learnt, was a term thrown so loosely about that he wasn’t even sure who _was_ his friend. But he hadn’t had a friend for awhile; he’d forgotten what it felt like.)

Littlefinger’s face was the picture of fear. He tried to keep his voice steady, tried to smile, but Reek knew fear like the back of his hand. Fear _was_ his friend, he realized, and he used it to his advantage. It was different to be the one _causing_ fear for once, but it was empowering. He wielded it like a well-worn sword, moulded to fit perfectly in his grip.

A girl was never far from Littlefinger; she had muddy brown hair and the bluest eyes Reek had ever seen. He thought of a red-haired girl who taught a ward all the songs, even though he’d had no interest whatsoever in them. If she recognized Reek, she did not show it. She recited her courtesies perfectly, and did not stop Reek and his lady as they approached her father, blade in hand. She stepped aside, watched them with a blank face as Reek grabbed Littlefinger by the collar of his pressed tunic.

The girl did not swoon or sigh as Reek held his blade to her father’s throat. She clasped her hands in front of her and stood next to Reek’s lady. They looked alike, somehow, but Reek could not put his finger on why. Perhaps it was the eyes; blue and cold and dead. These two women had no remorse, and Reek could not imagine why they would.

Her name was Alayne Stone, and Reek thought of a bastard boy made of snow. Alayne was the perfect lady, and when she turned her head slightly, Reek could have sworn he saw red. Auburn hair, the colour of autumn leaves and copper and a family of trouts. Reek thought of a young king, who had the same hair, surrounded by a crown of iron. When she looked back at him, though, it was the muddy brown once more. 

“Best close your eyes,” Reek suggested (to Littlefinger or to Alayne, he did not know), “and get it over with.”

Reek slashed, and Littlefinger stopped his thrashing and squirming at last. He collapsed into Reek’s arms, blood dripping onto the floor. His immaculate tunic was stained a deep red.

_Red, red, it rhymes with dead_.

* * *

 

_i._

Winterfell was burnt to the ground and covered with dust and snow, but Reek could still feel its power. It had been here for thousands of years, and it would be here for thousands more. Ice could not bring it down, and neither could fire. He felt like a young boy again, shipped away from his family; he felt a shiver go down his spine. He did not have a family to go home to; his lady and Alayne _were_ his family now.

He slept in a ward’s old chambers that night, curling up on his side and trembling. The room was one of the few that hadn’t burnt down in the fire, but he wished it had. It was untouched, had housed no one since the Prince of Winterfell. It held too many memories, and as they flooded his mind, tears pricked at the back of his eyes. _You are not Reek; you have to know your name_. He remembered a life of glory and promise, a life of hopes and dreams.

Two riders arrived on horseback the next morning. Reek stood in the courtyard with his lady and with Alayne, shrinking back into his too-big clothes. He’d taken a bath early this morn, had closed his eyes the entire time as he scrubbed himself clean. He hated looking at himself, at this _monster_ he’d become. Old wounds opened and he bled into the bathwater. He cried until Alayne came in and dried him off, murmuring reassurances and running her fingers through his hair.

Lord Snow and the steward’s daughter rode through the gates, dressed in heavy black furs. In another lifetime, Reek’s lady would have been angered to see the bastard. But as she stood beside Reek, she smiled- as best as she could, anyway. It looked more like a grimace, but Reek smiled with her, felt his heart beat loudly in his chest. She reminded him of a Lady of Winterfell from years and years ago, with auburn hair and blue eyes.

Lord Snow climbed off his horse and helped the steward’s daughter off of hers. He walked over to Reek, narrowing his eyes in concentration. He called him Theon, his voice full of awe and wonder and disbelief. Reek- _no, **Theon** , I am Theon, the last surviving son of Balon Greyjoy_\- fell into Lord Snow’s arms, sobbing and apologizing about his little brothers. “They’re alive, I know,” Lord Snow whispered. “Stannis is going to find them.”

“Jeyne,” Theon said, his voice clipped as she meekly approached him. _It rhymes with pain_. “I-I’m sorry. I-I should have taken you-” She cut him off with a shy smile and a kiss on his cheek. _She understood_ , and Theon blushed.  

Theon’s lady took him to the godswood after, the smile gone from her face. She sat him down in front of the heart tree and pulled off the hood of her cloak. There was a strange sort of warmth in her eyes, almost tenderness. Her heart was made of stone, but perhaps he’d managed to carve away at the surface. If not him, then Alayne and Lord Snow and Jeyne.

“You have served me well, and done me proud. For that, I thank you.” He always had to strain his ears to hear her; she only spoke on rare occasions, and when she did, he had to listen; she did not speak to waste breath. “There is one more person who needs to be laid to rest. I trust you to do the job.”

“Y-yes, my lady. Anything for you.”

The smile was back, but her eyes were sad. She knelt in front of him and wrapped her frail fingers around his dagger. She unsheathed it and pressed the tip of the blade to her chest. Theon opened his mouth to protest, to tell her that he couldn’t do this. He would die before she would, he’d sworn it.

“It is time for me to go.” She brought his hand to join hers, and tears fell down his cheeks.

Together, they pushed the dagger in. No blood came out; she was already dead, after all. He choked out a sob, watched as her eyes flickered shut. He owed her so much; she gave him his life back, gave him a name. Names were hard to get back, he’d learnt.

Catelyn Tully died for the second time that day, under the heart tree before the Old Gods. And with her death, she paid for Theon Greyjoy’s life.


End file.
